


Killing Time

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-23
Updated: 2006-06-23
Packaged: 2019-02-16 02:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13044870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After Sam leaves for Stanford, time passes quickly, slowly — excruciatingly. Dean flirts and hurts and even kills, but it's not as if Sam cares for any of that now, because he's gone, and he isn't coming back.





	Killing Time

On the first day after Sam leaves, Dean flirts with a lovely cashier named Kathleen at the local supermarket till nearly dinnertime, gets in a couple minutes before it’s time to eat to find Dad scowling at him over a newspaper, feet up on the table. “Bit late, aren’t you? What sort of supper do you plan to pull out of your ass with this kind of time?” 

“But it’s Sammy’s turn,” Dean almost says, before he realizes that it’s not going to be Sammy’s turn for a long time. “Sorry, sir,” he replies instead and uses the money he’d meant for treating himself to a little drink some night to buy them both takeout at the nearest restaurant. Dad snorts — he’s always decried restaurants as a waste of money, odd for someone who runs credit card scams — but better that than to be late. Dad hates his dinner late.

On the second day after Sam leaves, Dean has to clap his cell phone shut halfway through calling Sam to pick up a bag of peanut M&M’s when he remembers that Sam is some five states away and probably wouldn’t be inclined to be doing Dean favors even if he weren’t.

On the third day after Sam leaves, Dean fucks Kathleen the cashier and leaves as soon as she’s asleep.

On the fourth day after Sam leaves, Dean cries for the first time in seven years.

The last time was when he was fourteen, after his first proper girlfriend broke up with him, claiming he was too weird for her, and why couldn’t she ever come to his house, anyway? Dad gave him half an hour to mope before declaring to him that with a job like theirs, Dean didn’t have the time for girlfriends, anyway. Dean dried his eyes then with a steadfast “yessir” and hasn’t cried since.

This time, it suddenly hits Dean that Sam’s _gone_ , he’s gone for four years at least and maybe for good, and he sinks onto the edge of his bed and digs the heels of his hands into his eyesockets, but that can’t stop the tears from spilling out, burning hot on his cheeks, too obvious, too real.

“A bit of salt water isn’t going to turn him around,” says Dad from the doorway, and as much as Dean wants to pull a Sam and yell _Fuck you_ at the top of his lungs, he can’t, not if he wants to stop it with this stupid crying. Instead he swipes his sleeve across his face, and if a few more tears ease their way past all his angry barriers, neither he or Dad mentions it. After all, it’s just a bit of salt water.

On the fifth day after Sam leaves, Dean and Dad get scent of a banshee and head east, away from Stanford and away from Sam. The thing’s been killing people in a backwoods old town in Tennessee, and they ask around that day to find out a little more. It seems like a pretty average job. They crash that night in a crummy motel. This time, two queens and no one has to take the floor.

On the sixth day after Sam leaves, Dean’s too distracted and nearly gets his face clawed off when that bitch jumps him. Dad kills it easily, and Dean locks himself in the bathroom later and deals with his own first aid. Dad lets him, and maybe he suspects how much time Dean spends on the floor rather than in front of the mirror, burying his head in his arms and able to think about nothing but the fact that Sam would’ve been close enough to eliminate his need for first aid at all — or maybe he doesn’t. Dean doesn’t really care. Bile in his mouth and blood still staining his fingers, he jerks off with Sam’s name fixed in his head for the first time since the night his brother told them all he’d been accepted to Stanford. Seems like the combination of Sam and anger just turns him on or something.

When he comes out a full hour later, he doesn’t look at Dad and Dad doesn’t look at him.

On the seventh day after Sam leaves, Dean goes out and gets drunk. Might as well celebrate the one-week anniversary. He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud into his glass of beer until the guy next to him at the bar elbows him and asks, “Break-up or something?”

“Yeah,” says Dean without thinking. “Yeah, something like that.”

The dude gives him a sympathetic grin full of yellowed teeth that looks more like a grimace and pats Dean on the shoulder. Dean scowls at him, chugs the rest of his beer, and calls for another.

By midnight, he’s the drunkest he’s ever been. Dad finds him and practically drags him back to the motel by the scruff of his neck. “Stupid,” he says. “Stupid. What if there’d been a succubus hanging around? It never pays to get drunk, Dean. Never.”

On the eighth day after Sam leaves, the one thought that can batter its way in past Dean’s hangover is that Dad is definitely right about that one.

A month after Sam leaves, Dean celebrates the anniversary a little more wisely, by eradicating an entire den of werewolves, aiming to kill them in the most violent way possible. He gets in that night covered in gore and exhausted, but at least he’s too tired to even think about taking his now customary trip to the bathroom for a little quality time with his cock, Sam’s name, and a healthy dose of self-loathing.

A year after Sam leaves means that he’s not planning on so much as trying to visit, and Dean kills a man. He’s not possessed, he’s not serving some evil thing, he’s just a random guy who’s made a few mistakes and dabbled in more than he should and ended up killing half his town. But they’ve destroyed his altar and gotten the spellbook away from him and he’s powerless now, nothing but a sniveling idiot the police can take care of. Dad leaves the guy’s house first, to take a look around and make sure they haven’t been seen, and Dean looks out the window after him and happens to see the Stanford sticker on the back of the guy’s car, one of those stupid my-kid’s-going-to-a-better-college-than-your-kid things, and he turns around drives his knife through the guy’s belly in one quick thrust.

When Dad comes in a minute later, Dean says that he tried to attack him, and Dad doesn’t question him, only nods and sticks his gun back in its holster. They clear out before the police so much as know anything happened.

In the car on the way out of the state, Dean idly punches _fuck you_ into his cell, but he doesn’t send it, because something about it hits a little too close to home.

Three months after Dean becomes a murderer, he does send a text message to his brother, a simple “in town” with the name of a motel and a room number. Shittiest one they can find, of course. Sam and his slick, preppy friends would probably never venture near this part of town — all the better. Make him get out of his comfort zone a little.

One day after they get there, Dad drives in through the Stanford campus in his new pickup, the one Sam won’t recognize if he does happen to see it. He comes back with a strange sort of smile, half sadness and half pride. “He’s doing all right,” he says gruffly.

“You try and see him?” asks Dean.

“Nah,” says Dad. “He won’t want to.” But the next day he clears out, says he’ll go deal with this one alone — just a Black Dog, no big deal. Dean can stick around and hang out if he wants. Head down to the city, have a night off. Both of them know that’s not what Dean’s going to do at all.

Around 7:30, a knock sounds on the door, and it’s just like Sammy, three firm raps, only this time the last one is softer, as if he’s hesitant, second-guessing. Dean looks through the peephole to see his brother looking much the same — maybe a little more dressed up than he used to be, but whatever — hands shoved in his pockets, glancing nervously up and down the parking lot.

Dean opens the door sharply, not giving himself the time to be afraid of this, because it’s Sam, and he’s not afraid of Sam, no matter what.

“Oh!” says Sam when Dean opens the door. “Um — hi.”

Dean nods, finding himself unable to say anything, and opens the door wider to let Sam in. He enters cautiously, ducking his head despite the fact he doesn’t need to—you’re not that tall, Sammy boy, Dean wants to say. “Is Dad here?”

“Hunting,” Dean grunts.

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Yeah — right.”

Dean grabs a weapons bag off the nearest chair, gesturing to Sam to sit down. He takes his seat gingerly, as if he’s afraid that the drive to hunt will rub off on him or something. Fat chance, if eighteen years of living in the middle of it didn’t forge any kind of ties.

Dean’s more bitter than he remembers. He’s not sure if this good.

“So...” Sam says, clearly trying to get Dean to break his stony silence. “Um." 

“How’s it going?” Dean asks abruptly.

“Uh,” says Sam. “All right.”

“Yeah.” Sam feels like an intruder, as if he’s some stranger sticking his nose into Dean’s world. That’s not right. Sam might be an idiot, but he’s not a stranger.

“Why’d you text me?” his brother asks.

Dean struggles not to punch him. “I wanted to rob you,” he says, straight-faced.

The fact that it takes Sam a moment of hesitation to realize it’s a joke makes the urge to punch him that much stronger. “Right,” says Sam. “Seriously, man.”

“I dunno.” Dean shrugs. “Just figured, maybe you’d want to see your brother again or something, seeing as you haven’t talked to him in, oh, over a year.”

Sam flushes. “I didn’t know if you —”

“Yeah, well, blood’s thicker than water, or whatever it is they say.”

“Dad?” asks Sam.

Dean doesn’t answer.

Sam snorts. “Thought so.”

This time, Dean does punch him. Sam’s head snaps back, and his hand flies to his face. He doesn’t even try to defend himself, though, and that’s the only thing that stops Dean from following up the punch with one, two, a year and three months’ worth more.

“Four hundred and fifty-seven, you know,” he tells Sam instead, breathing harder than he should be.

“What?”

“Days,” Dean explains. “Since we last spoke.”

“Oh.” Sam looks nonplussed, still rubbing at his face.

“You know, Sammy,” Dean tells him, “sometimes, I fucking hate you.”

“I —”

“Shut up,” says Dean, but he knows Sam too well to think he’s going to, so instead Dean grabs him by the shirt, pulls him up out of the seat, and brings their lips fiercely together.

Sam freezes, but a moment later one of his hands is on Dean’s arm and the other at his hip, caught between pulling him closer and pushing him away. He settles on the tight, desperate grip Dean recognizes from the last time he fucked a virgin, and he presses closer, pushing Sam back down into his chair, except that this time he goes down with him, knee between his brother’s legs, and when he leans forward he can feel Sam’s erection against his thigh. He lets his hands go to Sam’s chest, fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, one popping right off, at the same time as he grinds his thigh into Sam’s crotch, feeling his brother’s strangled gasp in his own mouth.

But then enormous hands on his own chest shove him away, hard, and Sam’s sprawled in the chair, his face bright red, breathing hard and looking stupidly hot. “Dean —” His voice breaks like he’s an awkward pre-teen. “Dean, I — I have a girlfriend, I —”

“Right,” says Dean, sucking in his breath, putting one hand against the wall to steady himself. “Yeah. Right. Whatever.”

“I —sorry,” says Sam, pushing himself up and out of the chair. The bulge between his legs is still painfully obvious. He edges around the chair as if he’s afraid of coming too close to Dean. “I —” And he just shakes his head and walks rapidly out the door.

On the four hundred and fifty-seventh day after Sam leaves, Dean ends up jerking off alone in the crappy motel bathroom, just as he always does.

\---

On the first day after Sam leaves, Dad gets back around noon. “He show?” he asks casually as he collects clean clothes and heads for the shower.

“No,” says Dean, and adds half a second later, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dad nods, flipping on the bathroom light. “Found an article about some haunting up in South Dakota,” he says. “We’ll be starting out this evening.”

“Sure thing,” says Dean. The door closes, the shower turns on, and Dean takes a moment to finger the button from Sam’s shirt before dropping it into the trash can and going to pack his bag.


End file.
